Lieberman Wades Into Florida's Discontent: Sting Of 2000 Election
Could Help Him In 2004

By David Lightman, The Hartford Courant,
22 January 2002

TAMPA -- There's still a quiet rage on Cypress Street when the subject
of the 2000 presidential election comes up.

People in the heart of this city's black community still seethe about
votes that didn't count and what looked like a systematic effort to
disenfranchise them. That's why it was politically potent and poignant
that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., the man who might have been
vice president had the Florida vote count been handled differently,
came to preach Monday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Whether it will help Lieberman in his 2004 presidential quest is
another question.

Lieberman was all empathy Monday as he tried hard to bond with black
residents who lined the streets for a parade and gathered at the
Bethel Baptist Institutional Church. He recalled how he stood at
the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, when King
delivered his I have a dream speech and how he was a freedom
rider in 1964 in Mississippi.

He remembered how King stood in the wings one day when a young
Lieberman spoke in Bridgeport. He shook my hand and in that
magnificent voice said, `Very good, young man,' the Connecticut
Democrat recalled wistfully.

But Florida's black community will not be an easy place for Lieberman
to triumph on his own. At the church, a Tampa reporter asked the
senator about his controversial 1995 view questioning affirmative
action. I've been against quotas, Lieberman said, but not
affirmative action.

He also encountered a small protest, people with signs saying that
King would not have approved of Lieberman's eagerness to use the
military with its disproportionately black ranks.

He's too militant, said Connie Burton, a local activist who
waited outside the church. We want more attention paid to our
neighborhoods, added Regina Jordan, a friend.

Still, a visit on King's day has important symbolic value for
Lieberman.

The bitterness of the Supreme Court's Bush vs. Gore decision, which
decided the presidency in 2000, has retreated into the history books
in most of the country, but it's still alive here.

Florida politicos are still battling over just what happened. While
the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that more than half of the
rejected votes were cast by blacks, Republicans rejected those
findings and maintain that keeping the spirit of 2000 alive will not
work.

Sen. Lieberman is just another senator visiting Florida. The only
place the [2000] election still matters is in the very, very hard core
on the Democratic side, said David Johnson, executive director of
the Florida Republican Party.

Lieberman's visit was a way of showing solidarity with these
grievances. He mentioned the 2000 election at each of his three stops
in Tampa Monday and generally found appreciative, if not
overwhelmingly enthusiastic, crowds.

At the University of Tampa football stadium, some 400 people sat
sweltering in the stands as Lieberman interrupted the parade of
marching bands and convertibles carrying notables.

In the year 2000, I was honored to be given the opportunity to be
the first Jewish American to run for higher office in the United
States of America, he said, and then told how civil rights leader
Jesse Jackson called to congratulate him and tell him the choice helps
open the doors for everyone.

Somebody out there, he said to the nearly all-black crowd,
can grow up to be president of the United States.

But first, Lieberman wants a turn, and Florida will have a major say
in who gets the 2004 presidential nomination and ultimately the White
House. It was obvious Monday that Lieberman has two advantages: He was
Vice President Gore's running mate, and thus a very visible part of
the team that got hurt by Florida's voting irregularities, and he is
immensely popular in the state's heavily Democratic Jewish community.

But it was just as obvious he needs to win friends among black
voters. It's really not his constituency at all, said political
analyst Jennifer Duffy.

Lieberman did win respect, if not friends, at the church. He thanked
all of you who stood by us last year and talked about the
power of the [electoral] franchise Dr. King fought so hard for.

Not bad, folks said. He was eloquent in the proper places, said
Gerald White, a power plant operator. But he, like others, wouldn't
commit to Lieberman. It's early, people said, and this community has
heard political promises too often. Make no mistake, people said,
Lieberman needs us.

But we will vote, vowed Bettye Davis Jordan, as she sat on her
front step watching the parade. And we will be counted. We at least
won't make that mistake again.